Kukla's Korner Hockey

, In fact, here’s what you have to do for the rest of this series - don’t start watching the games until the third period.

It’s quite bizarre, really, because so far in the first round, the Avs and Wild have done everything they can to put you to sleep early in the evening, then keep you on the edge of your seat as the night goes on and Monday night’s game was no exception.

For two periods in this series, the Wild generally spends most of its time skating backwards through the neutral zone, not bothering to forecheck even on the power play and pretty much choking the life out of the game

Immediate reaction to Vancouver’s firing of Dave Nonis: The battle is on for Brian Burke.

Burke clearly has bigger concerns right now. His Ducks are an endangered species, down 2-0 to a Dallas team that didn’t exactly resemble a serious contender down the stretch. However, the Stars look superior in every way to Anaheim, a popular pick to represent the West – again – in the Stanley Cup Final.

The timing of Canuck owner Francesco Aquilini’s announcement is very strange. It’s rare – extremely rare – for anyone to fire a general manager by statement, in the evening, while playoff games are going on.

To advance in the NHL playoffs, the Avalanche must embrace the darkness. When playing this goon-it- up Wild bunch, hockey is a no-holds- barred battle of attrition, not skill.

The only good thing that can be said about Minnesota’s 3-2 overtime victory against Colorado was the game lasted so deep into the night that it ended past the bedtime of most kids who could be frightened by the way the Wild mauls all the beauty from the sport.

I have to double-check with Red Fisher, the Living Legend of Sports Journalism, but it seems to me that through most of the team’s glorious history, the Canadiens sweaters one saw at a Canadiens game were worn by Canadiens. The only ones wearing red in the stands were Forum ushers. Between shifts, Maurice Richard and the other immortals gazed out at a sea of black, blue and grey topcoats.

Dressing for hockey meant furs for the ladies, fedoras on the gents. If the referees made a bad call, Toe Blake would protest and toe rubbers would rain down on the ice.

I don’t know what a mink stole cost in 1955, but a Reebok Edge authentic Canadiens jersey will run you $300 in 2008 - $380 if you want it customized with a name and a number. And of the 21,273 who pack the Bell Centre for every Canadiens home game, at least 10,637 are wearing red or white bleu-blanc-rouge - not counting six on the ice and 14 on the bench.

Pronger is mean, nasty, sadistic, talented, gritty; your basic hockey nightmare and exactly what you want in a captain. He is the guy who night in and night out says you have to come through me to get to them. Or he used to be that guy.

That Pronger has been nowhere to be found in this first-round playoff series; unless you count seeing snippets of him in Dallas Stars captain Brenden Morrow.

He has out-Prongered Pronger with his play and is a big reason the Stars find themselves up 2-0 on the defending Stanley Cup champs with a chance to bury them in Game 3 tonight at the AAC.

But how much of it should continue to spill after the initial laceration was unclear after San Jose Sharks’ Patrick Marleau appeared to lose a pint or two in Sunday’s loss to the Calgary Flames….

NHL spokesman Gary Meagher said yesterday the league’s procedures in dealing with open cuts and blood are guidelines rather than strict rules to allow for “some judgement on the part of the referee” to decide if a player has been sufficiently treated by medical staff.

Pierre Marc-Bouchard’s goal at 11:58 of OT won it for Minnesota, which was the stronger-looking team in the extra session. The goal was the result of the Avs’ Jeff Finger taking the wrong path behind the net to a puck that should have been icing. The puck further took a crazy bounce to Brian Rolston in the right corner, and he fed a wide-open Bouchard for a wrister to the top shelf.

“The puck took a funny hop and we made a mistake on the other side of the net,” Avs coach Joel Quenne-ville said. “They had some good chances in OT.”

So while there were not alarm bells ringing in their dressing room Monday night at Sommet Center, they were well aware of a disturbing trend that cost the Western Conference’s top seed Game 3.

Nashville scored its first four goals in pairs, with second-period goals just 2:09 apart and third-period goals that tied and won a 5-3 game separated by only nine ticks of the clock.

In Detroit’s Game 2 win, Nashville’s two goals came in an 11-second span.

“Anytime a team scores, the next shift is so critical,” Detroit Coach Mike Babcock said. “The thing we talked about … as a coaching staff is obviously we’re not doing a good enough job of it. They get excited and play a little bit better and we seem to come out on our heels.”